{"id":19503,"date":"2017-11-12T13:28:04","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T12:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=19503"},"modified":"2017-11-12T13:28:04","modified_gmt":"2017-11-12T12:28:04","slug":"12th-november-remembrance-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=19503","title":{"rendered":"12th November &#8211; Remembrance Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday of November and ceremonies are held throughout the country in churches, cenotaphs and war memorials.<\/p>\n<p>We had a knock on the door at 8 am, a reminder that our car was parked on the route of the parade and needed moving. It was chilly out.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag17\/17111207.jpg\" alt=\"Remembrance Sunday\" \/><br \/>\nAt 10:15 dignitaries paraded from the Guildhall to St Helen&#8217;s Church, and after a service inside joined the crowd of people already standing round the war memorial in the Square shortly before 11am.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag17\/17111206.jpg\" alt=\"Remembrance Sunday\" \/><br \/>\nThey were joined at both services by soldiers from Dalton Barracks, who not only join the community at Abingdon but send teams to ceremonies round the region.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag17\/17111204.jpg\" alt=\"Remembrance Sunday\" \/><br \/>\nMany different uniformed groups took part. On Remembrance Sunday, Scouts are expected to attend and give the troop priority over their other Sunday sporting activities.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag17\/17111203.jpg\" alt=\"Remembrance Sunday\" \/><br \/>\nSo at 11 Abingdon paused to pay its respects to those who lost their lives in conflict. The &#8216;Last Post&#8217; was played by Abingdon Town Band member, Alison Rich, to mark the start of the two minute silence at 11. She then sounded the &#8216;Reveille&#8217;. After which The Deputy Lord-Lieutenant, Mrs Felicity Dick; the Mayor of Abingdon, Councillor Jan Morter; MP for Abingdon and Oxford West, Layla Moran,  the Royal British Legion and many other organisations laid wreaths of red poppies at the memorial.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag17\/17111210.jpg\" alt=\"Remembrance Sunday\" \/><br \/>\nThe poppy is the symbol of the Day of Remembrance because many years ago poppies grew from the the choppy earth where troops had fallen. <\/p>\n<p>Remembering is the process of &#8216;Bringing the past into the present&#8217;\u2026 But who now can remember what it was like to live in the trenches of WWI? Only through war poetry have those memories become part of our collective consciousness &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><i>Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz&#8211;<br \/>\nThe nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?<br \/>\nDo you remember the rats; and the stench<br \/>\nOf corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench&#8211;<br \/>\nAnd dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? <\/i><br \/>\n(lines from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.potw.org\/archive\/potw160.html\">Aftermath<\/a>)<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag17\/17111201.jpg\" alt=\"Remembrance Sunday\" \/><br \/>\nFinally there is a march along the High Street to the County Hall. People, who could not squeeze into the Square,cheered as the band, the troops and uniformed groups marched by.<\/p>\n<p>One innovation this year, and a sign of the times after recent terrorist attacks by vehicles driven into crowds, was that a tractor, and land rover were parked at strategic points &#8211; as crash barriers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday of November and ceremonies are held throughout the country in churches, cenotaphs and war memorials. We had a knock on the door at 8 am, a reminder that our car was parked on the route of the parade and needed moving. It was chilly out. At 10:15 dignitaries paraded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ceremony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}